Customer Reviews

Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
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In this short but dense book, Stephen Eric Bronner sets out to defend the Enlightenment in general and enlightened values in particular. According to him, the oft-heard equation of Enlightenment with Totalitarianism is ill founded and all to frequently amounts to nothing more than a caricature. Taking Adorno and Horkheimer as starting point, he carries his critique of this strand of thought to Foucault and Zygmunt Bauman among others. To view the Enlightenment as inherently leading to Auschwitz is to put things on its head. This runs contrary to many of its central ideals, like tolerance, civil liberties and freedom of speech. If any movement is to blame, it would be its opposite - the Counter-Enlightenment. "Where the Enlightenment valued liberty, discursive persuasion, and the critical exercise of reason, the Counter-Enlightenment stood for obedience, coercive authority, and tradition "(67). Rather than seeking absolute truth and striving for an ultimate Utopia for all humankind, the Enlightenment was in favour of social reform and stood up for the oppressed and disenfranchised. "Is it really that difficult," exclaims Bronner, "to discern the debt to the Enlightenment of those democrats and socialists...who defended the Weimar Republic as against the debt of the Counter-Enlightenment of those who sought to bring it down like Ernst Jünger, Oswald Spengler, and the gang surrounding Hitler?" (112-113).
With clarity and rigor, Bronner inquires into the two historically opposed lines of thought. To him the demarcation lines are quite clear. Despite "fashionable" attempts to blur the differences between left and right, between liberalism and conservatism, Bronner sticks firmly to his philosophical and political tradition. He also has a clear and distinct style of writing, but some knowledge of critical theory is obviously needed and the umpteenth time the word "reification" turns up, one could get lost in a bit of philosophical jargon.
Nevertheless, Reclaiming the Enlightenment is, in my view, a welcome book as counterweight to the seemingly popular simplification of the Enlightenment legacy. Stephen Eric Bronner is one of its most articulate apologists - Susan Neiman also springs to mind - and deserves to be widely read.
Just one small quip: In his fervour to defend the Enlightenment, he even lays its inspirational influence on the doorstep of homeopathy - a foggy practice if ever there was one.

We have been so inundated with 'postmodern' diatribe against the Enlightenment that it is refreshing, and very illuminating, to find someone taking up the cudgels against this antimodern propaganda whose principal beneficiaries have been the religious right (in fact, the term 'postmodern' was used by Toynbee to ply his denigration of modernity quite before the leftist cult on this even began). The book by Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of the Enlightenment, deserved, and gets here, a respectful challenge, leaving one to wonder what actually fueled the fashion over that flawed analysis.
The author deftly navigates through the complexities of the Enlightenment, and, importantly, the so-called Counter-Enlightenment, careful to note that the latter has no real dialectical relationship to the former, an important point if it might seem that rationality had spawned irrationality (in the muddle over dialectic left behind by Hegel).
I think Adorno and Horkheimer missed the point that rather than a 'dialectic of the Enlightenment' we might suffer a loss of the balance indicated by that rich spectrum of cultural innovations. A later decline from the Enlightenment is very much what those authors seem to be attacking, not the Enlightenment itself. The onset of positivism and the grip of scientism in the gelling of the dread Iron Cage was not the fault of the brilliant innovators of the Enlightenment. Indeed, the work of that quintessential 'philosopher' Kant seems almost to prophesy and attempt to forestall the decline of culture from the enigmatic peak period we call the 'Enlightenment'.
I think that the Enlightenment remains a puzzle until we see its place in the larger framework of modernity as a whole, and modernity in context of the evolution of civilization. The suspicious similarity to the Axial era lingers in one's mind, and the 'Greek Enlightenment' is mysteriously echoed and amplified in the modern case.
Once we consider this larger framework we can properly defend its role as a peak which we might wish to transcend to progress, but from which we might instead decline.

John Landon
World History And The Eonic Effect
World History and the Eonic Effect
discusses the issue of the Enlightenment and its place in world history

Refreshingly frank on the need to expunge the latent Heideggerianism/cultural pessimism from the Frankfurt School, Bronner dispenses with all notions of pressing the counter-enlightenment into service for progressive ends. Instead, he gets us to square up to the exacting *but politically sober* demands of the Enlightenment. It's only two cheers, then, for modernity (but one that doesn't end up at Auschwitz ...) But, its three cheers, most certainly, for the moral clarity Bronner engenders, not least in expunging the aristocratic-romantic-Teutonic strains from Critical Theory's past.

This is truly a strange book.

I'm not going to argue about definitions of the Enlightenment. As long as the term is used to refer to rationalism in one's approach to questions of science and society as well as some sort of political liberalism, I'll accept it. And Bronner surely treats the Enlightenment in such a manner.

The author starts by explaining that both those on the political right and those on the political left have been attacking Enlightenment values. He says that "human rights is often used as an ideological excuse for the exercise of arbitrary power." I agree.

He also points out some traditional conservative arguments against the Enlightenment: its supposed nihilism and its "assault on communal life, religious faith, social privilege, and traditional authority." As a supporter of the Enlightenment, I'm proud to oppose religious tyranny and social inequity. And I think this book tends to support such a position.

I think that opposition to rationalism, such as what we might find in the misleading arguments of the Creationists, is a good example of anti-Enlightenment attitudes. Bronner does not bring this up (although I have no reason to think he would disagree with me on this), but instead delves into opposition to social justice.

There is an interesting question here: what do racism, anti-Semitism, chauvinism, and other forms of illiberal oppression have to do with the Enlightenment? Bronner identifies all this as part of the Counter-Enlightenment, and I agree. But I also feel that there is a strong anti-rational attitude of some of the oppressors which one can see clearly in their responses to any challenges of their biases.

Bronner does point out that National Socialism in Germany succeeded in part because of its popularity in universities there. And that various intellectuals did offer their support to some very oppressive leaders. I think he then makes the same mistake.

Given the author's concern about anti-Semitism, I'm not surprised that he comes up with this: "a half-wit prime minister of Malaysia, who opposes the introduction of democracy into the non-western world, rants about the power of world Jewry." But I am surprised at the following: "Outside of the Middle East, where hatred of Jews is fueled by the imperialist policies of the Israeli state, anti-Semitism has become detached from any party or mass movement genuinely competing for political power."

I suggest that he look at the politics in, say, the UN General Assembly. And more important, why is he appearing to stipulate to a wild accusation against the Jews by calling Arab demands to obliterate human rights for Jews a mere reaction to Israeli policies? His praise of Noam Chomsky and Ed Said, with no mention of their antirational and arbitrary opposition to Israel, appears to fit right in with this very anti-Enlightenment view.

Bronner encourages us not to discard the contributions of various Enlightenment intellectuals merely on the grounds that they sometimes had some reactionary social views. But I'm not so sure I want to offer him the same charity. Given his concern about anti-Semitism, he ought to be very wary of supporting this sort of antirational and antisocial behavior.

I think this is no small error on Bronner's part. Those who read his more recent book, "Blood in the Sand," may discover why I consider it to be an anti-Enlightenment work. If the problem were merely a rational belief in excessive rights of the Majority, I would at least understand how this could be reasonably consistent with Enlightenment views in some other areas. But I think the problem is deeper than that, and that Bronner has no use for rationalism when he discusses Israel. In any case, I feel that two stars is plenty for what is otherwise a very interesting study.